The Kiss of Death

How the frenetic, heated, and borderline-insane race to oust Democratic Senate hawk Joe Lieberman brought new meaning to the term "partisan politics"

The final leg of the campaign starts early, in already sweltering heat. Ned Lamont, his wife, Annie, and their aide-de-camp Marc Bradley stand outside the Messiah Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, waiting for Congresswoman Maxine Waters to arrive. Outsiders tend to think of Connecticut as leafy, white, and wealthy, but its three biggest cities—Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport—are hardscrabble, black, and poor. Which means they're rich in Democratic primary voters, and on this morning the biggest collection of those voters is at church. As dozens of parishioners stream by in their colorful Sunday best, Ned stands in his somber business suit, looking awkward and anxious. He turns to Marc and says they should go in and sit down, but Marc insists that they wait for Maxine to usher them in. "Tom was very clear about that," he says, referring to Tom Swan, Lamont's bulldog of a campaign manager. Eventually, Maxine arrives and leads them to their pew. She follows the sermon with her Bible open, while Ned and Annie survey the scene, looking pleasant and a little uncomfortable. Then Maxine stands up and introduces Ned—an extremely wealthy former selectman—as a man "speakin' my language" because of his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war.

"Morning, everybody," Ned says to the congregation at Messiah Baptist, without waiting for Messiah to answer back. "I'm Ned Lamont, and I'm running for U.S. Senate."

Six months ago, Ned was just another Democrat outraged at Bush's war and at the way in which the White House, as he saw it, avoided taking responsibility for the disaster it had created in Iraq by branding as unpatriotic anyone who dared criticize the direction of American policy. What ultimately persuaded him to run, though, was when Congressman Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet, called for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and in the national conversation that followed, Joe Lieberman declared, "We undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril." To Ned, this was the final straw—not just a Democrat saying he still supported military involvement in Iraq, but a Democrat implying there was no place in America for the questioning of a policy that a majority of Americans now disagreed with.

It's somewhere between forbidding and impossible for a primary challenger to defeat an incumbent senator, and in early May, Lamont trailed Lieberman by forty-six points in the polls. But progressive Democrats are as angry now as they've been in generations, about Iraq and Katrina and about a centrist Democratic philosophy that they believe is gutless in its unwillingness to confront a failed Bush regime. And when Ned entered the race, Joe quickly became a lightning rod for that rage.

The liberal blogosphere, spoiling for an intraparty fight, discovered, vetted, and then put all their chips down on Ned's campaign. National sites like Daily Kos, MyDD, and Firedoglake raised money and created buzz, and Tim Tagaris, Lamont's young Internet director (and an ex-Marine), took online strategy from virtual to hard-core. In baggy shorts and a backward baseball cap, Tagaris marshaled a thoroughly obsessed band of local bloggers into a stunningly effective combat platoon. Among other psyops, they created the now infamous float dubbed "The Kiss"—a giant papier-mâché depiction of the smooch Bush laid on Lieberman after his State of the Union address last year. "The Kiss" dogged Lieberman at public events, humiliating him, infuriating his supporters, and cracking up passersby. And a squad of video-camera-wielding locals with names like Spazeboy and Connecticut Bob disseminated footage of these guerrilla operations to the blogosphere (at no cost via YouTube), and a brand-new form of political combat was born.

By the time I arrived in Connecticut in early July, Joe led by only fifteen points; a few weeks later, on July 20, Ned had not only erased that lead but had crept slightly ahead.

Then it really got serious. Joe called in the Big Dog, as everyone on the campaign referred to him, and Bill Clinton, the definitive Democratic centrist, came to Connecticut to show Joe some badly needed love. The effect was something like a two-by-four to the back of Ned's head.

That was the state of play on the morning of July 30 when Ned stood outside Messiah Baptist and said, with a tone of genuine worry that I hadn't heard before, "It's good to get some religion. We need some religion right now."

Over the next several days, national media descended on the campaign in hordes, rumors of wild swings in the polls swirled, staffers on both sides speed-cycled between elation and panic. It wasn't Chicago in '68 or D.C. during Watergate, but in Connecticut in the summer of '06, tremors of something dramatic were rumbling. Maybe even an earthquake.

JULY 31

Make way for the professionals

A new team of well-coiffed, overdressed, and humorless staff on loan from Joe's Senate office in Washington has just arrived, saying they're "on vacation" from their duties in the capital, to take over handling the media. In addition to maximizing photo ops and camera angles, their main task is to protect the senator from hostile press questions and irate constituents, of which there are plenty. Before, you could hang around and chat with Joe casually after his events, get in a follow-up question or two, but those days are over. It's all very formal and tense now.

The campaign has just launched "Joe's Tomorrow Tour," a ten-day blitz of the state, and I'm standing in the parking lot of Norwalk's Maritime Aquarium, waiting for the big bus to arrive. On its face, the idea of today's first stop is to highlight Joe's environmental record, but the real goal of Joe's events is to keep the conversation off his support for the war in Iraq, which 86 percent of Connecticut Democrats oppose.

A small gaggle of cameramen wait in the shade. Kids in bright Lieberman T-shirts, some paid to be there, array themselves around the perimeter, at the unsubtle directions of Joe's advance staff, and wait for the signal to simulate spontaneous enthusiasm. The bus arrives with police escort and disgorges a phalanx of press and staff. Joe's driver, Joe Derosier, a man with big hands, belly, tattoos, and smile, steps off the bus and rubs his eyes. The cameramen come out into the light and get in the ready position, and then everyone waits for an uncomfortably long time in the sun until Joe finally bounds out of the bus, trying in vain to fake the look of recently arrived exuberance.

The first human within reach is Derosier. Joe grabs his hand and embraces him in a full-on man-clench for the cameras, as though Derosier were a faithful supporter who drove out to the mouth of the Norwalk River just because he's eager to hear more about Joe's support for bike trails. I turn to the young staffer next to me and say, "Wait, that's his driver he just embraced!" She shrugs like, No shit, you idiot, that's how this works. And she's right. This event might as well be taking place on a soundstage. All that matters is that the manufactured support looks real on the evening news tonight and in the paper tomorrow.

Lamont's events, by contrast, have been full of genuine enthusiasm—and unpaid supporters—but informal and amateurish from a media-war point of view. Standing there in the oppressive sun watching the fake Lieberman event, I wonder whether Ned—with all the attendant populist hopes that have been projected onto him—can withstand the weight of the Big Dog's rally and then a ten-day onslaught of expensive stage management. Welcome to the big leagues, selectman.

AUGUST 1

In the back of the bus, between pizza shop and carnival, I try to crawl inside Joe Lieberman's head

Joe's press liaison tells me availability is limited on the Tomorrow Tour bus. They might be able to get me on, she says, but they also might have to kick me off the bus at some point to make room for others. Either this is another attempt at manufacturing excitement or they're sadly deluded about the Tomorrow Tour's allure, because the bus is three-quarters empty. In addition to Joe and a handful of staffers, there's me; there's a nice guy from Newsday in seersucker and a summer hat; there's a correspondent from the Times who, when she's not hunched over her BlackBerry, is quite funny; and there's a bedraggled and erudite cameraman from the BBC—and that's it.

It's a long day, with nine scheduled stops: two diners and a pizza shop, then a senior center, a construction site, a supermarket, a firehouse, a factory, and a carnival. Between events, the staff schedules one-on-one chats with Joe at the back of the bus. It's good, sustained, quiet access as mile after mile of Connecticut's broken industrial towns, suburban mansions, and dairy farms float by.

For weeks, I've been postponing the questions I'm dying to ask Joe about his refusal to concede any mistakes in his support for the war. Like everyone, I have strong feelings about Iraq, and I'm not going to feign objectivity here. (The mainstream media has that role well in hand.) I was in Iraq for a while, I've been writing a series of articles about the war coming home, and I've attended too many funerals and interviewed too many traumatized soldiers. In my opinion, the war is a clusterfuck of historic proportions.

But I'm afraid that as soon as I open my mouth about this, Joe and his handlers will sense my bias and cut off my access. I've seen them do it to other reporters who got on their shitlist (one reporter tells me that the staff still holds a grudge against him from some perceived slight during the '04 presidential campaign), so I'm guessing my few minutes with Joe at the back of this bus will be the last private time I'm granted with him.

Between the firehouse and the factory, a handler signals that it's my time. Despite my bravado in expressing an uncompromising opinion about his war, I'm a little nervous to actually sit down with the senator. He won the popular vote for vice president in 2000 and ran for president himself in '04. He's personally acquainted with prime ministers and kings. He's the most successful Jewish politician in American history. Not just a Jew but a faithful Orthodox Jew. As a fellow Jew, I'm proud of him—and proud of America—for that. I imagine it's something similar to what Catholics once felt about JFK.

Also, it's easy to be venomous toward a man's policy from a distance, but it's a whole different thing to sit across from him as he offers an expansive smile and warm blue eyes. His face is filled with laugh lines and long, fleshy crevices that make him look craggily distinguished. And that bass voice, so pompous and artificial in front of a microphone, sounds avuncular and almost sweet up close.

I start with a softball about how, eight days out, it must be strange for such an accomplished member of the Senate to be this uncertain about his political future. Joe responds predictably, saying it all depends on turnout. He's just brought in several million dollars' worth of get-out-the-vote muscle from a firm run by the legendary organizer Tom Lindenfeld, and if they can turn out votes in black and Hispanic neighborhoods and from union families, Joe says, they'll overwhelm Ned's affluent, suburban, antiwar elites.

I'm already down to ten minutes, time to get to it. "I want to ask you this question, because it's a parlor game among the journalists."

"This'll be interesting."

"We sit around, and we actually draft the speech that we think you might have given, the one that would have diffused a lot of the vituperation without abandoning your core stance. That speech is a concession not to the fact there is opposition but to the validity of some of that opposition."

"Oh, interesting!"

I read him a passage from a recent New York Times dispatch from Baghdad, quoting an Iraqi who says, "We're all sentenced to death, but we don't know when." The article goes on, "There are few people who haven't had a family member threatened, wounded or killed… Hope is in ridiculously short supply."

I try to make eye contact. He leans back. "Now, one of your problems from a media point of view, I think, is that most of us either have been to Iraq or have good friends in Iraq, and everyone thinks that the war is going very badly south very quickly. And the truth is, a lot of people in uniform say the same thing, sotto voce."

He sighs and says, "It's mid."

"So why would you still say, earlier today, for example, there's progress in Iraq It seems to me it's possible it's that that's got everybody angry at you. It isn't just Bush, and it isn't just your support for the war. It's your unwillingness to concede anything."

He shifts in his seat and sighs again. "Well, I don't know. I try to do it. I hear you. I talk about it all the time. I was clearest in the debate, interestingly, and you know I'm very realistic. I find the sectarian violence over the past three or four months heartbreaking, discouraging. So what's the progress Progress is they did hold free elections; it's a government with strong representation from all factions. But there is this terrible sectarian violence. I think it has been quite brutally and brilliantly created or stimulated by the terrorists, but it's a fact. So I, I don't hesitate to—it's interesting—I, we've talked about it at different times—I always talk about it publicly—we haven't, sort of, put any paid commercial time—except the acknowledgement in my first commercial: 'I know you're angry.' "

"Except that's different, right Saying 'I acknowledge you are angry' is different from saying 'I acknowledge you have a point.' "

"I'm working on something [for TV], which doesn't get to that part, which—it's interesting—now, damn it, there's only so much you can do in thirty seconds. It talks to—just assures them that I feel—I mean, it starts from the premise that 'I know you're concerned about Iraq, and I want to tell you for myself where I stand.' So it's interesting. I mean, look, I don't believe in a deadline to get out, so there's just a certain number of people who are just not gonna be happy with my position. But I think there are people who need to hear I don't believe in an open-ended commitment and that I want to see the Iraqis take over and that I feel a special responsibility, because I have supported the war, to bring that about. I say all the time, to just remind people, that I was very critical of Bush and Rumsfeld, post-Saddam. History will judge them, and I think it will judge them very harshly on that. It's part of the reason why we're in such difficulty today. Not the only reason. Those forces—well, anyway—"

"Yeah, you know, I do say it, but, I don't know, it's interesting. I—we may look back at this—" He stops again and laughs bitterly. "Anyway, the odds are that there will be a piece on TV in the closing days. There were people in the campaign who felt that I should change the subject, but I don't have to change the subject to ask them to think about everything else on which they agree with me. If they were just voting on the war, I'd be out of it. Totally. Interesting."

The most fascinating thing in politics is the intersection between a grave policy question and an individual leader's personality. In my opinion, there's a major psychodrama playing out in Joe's head about Iraq. He aborts every sentence that implies a concession that he made a mistake. It's like his conscience starts to get just a bit ahead of his pride, and then the hubris races to catch up and tackles the concession midsentence. After a month of interviews, I'm convinced many voters generally like Joe and that he could have taken the wind out of Ned's sails by simply saying he miscalculated in his optimism on the outcome of the war and asked for voters' forbearance. That he refuses to pay them that respect infuriates people. He may just lose his career over the simple human inability to concede a possible mistake. Interesting.

AUGUST 2

How hot Ask the guy in the banana suit

One hundred degrees. One hundred ten on the humidity index. More national press and TV crews arrive every day now. A swarm of Internet activists are buzzing—virtually, online, and physically, around Ned. Senators keep dropping in to help Joe. It's just a primary, but it sure as hell doesn't feel like one.

I go to a prayer breakfast in the morning to meet the Reverend Al Sharpton, who's just arrived to campaign for Ned alongside Jesse Jackson. After prayers, a reporter tells me Joe is canceling his morning events, including a big union Wal-Mart protest rally today in Bridgeport, to shoot a new commercial about Iraq. It's late in the campaign to cancel a media appearance. Every hour, every voter, counts now. Maybe this is the mea culpa he's avoided for so long. If so, it will change the nature of the final week's debate entirely. I call another reporter, who confirms that the campaign told her the same thing. A blogger calls me to confirm. Seems everyone got the same message. That means Ned will be alone at the rally. Something's up, so I race up to Bridgeport to find out what it is.

By the time I get there, the pavilion outside City Hall is packed—with Lieberman signs, staff, and hundreds of kids in T-shirts. I mean packed. The Tomorrow Tour bus looms outside, and then I see Joe already in place at the lectern, surrounded by union officials who support him. A Lamont campaign staffer looks at me, points at Joe, and raises his eyebrows in confusion. They must have heard that Joe canceled, too. By the time Ned approaches to take his place, there's no room for him to stand at the podium. There are dozens of cameras, and the news tonight will show images of Joe looking comfortable at the center, surrounded by Lieberman signs everywhere, and Ned on the periphery looking awkward. The press just got played, and Ned just got muscled.

Meanwhile, Ned's campaign manager, Tom Swan, is in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by Lieberman supporters. Tom's a rugby player, one of those Irish guys who are happiest when they're in a fight, and for the past six months he's built Ned's operation from the ground up, so he takes this fight personally. A guy in a banana suit with a sign that says ANYONE WHO VOTES FOR LAMONT IS BANANAS jostles Tom on his left, and a big guy with a beard but no mustache jostles him on the right. I'm twenty feet away, but I can see the anger in Tom's eyes. The big guy fronts Tom and says, "Hit me. C'mon, hit me." They square off, arms down but chins up. "Hit me," the guy says again into Tom's face. "Do it." This all seems too well choreographed to be random.

Over the next ten minutes, Joe gives a good speech to the union brothers, and Ned follows with remarks that are a little quiet and lame. Swan, Banana Man, and the big guy glare at one another from a foot away, dripping with sweat.

Man, it's hot.

LATER THAT NIGHT

C'mon, church people, stand up!

Ned Lamont is white. I mean, really white. Prep school at Eter, undergrad at Harvard (where one of the libraries carries his family name), grad school at Yale. He comes from old money (his great-grandfather was a chairman at J. P. Morgan), his wife made lots more, he made more himself. He doesn't exactly exude street cred. Ned volunteer-teaches in tough schools in Bridgeport, which everyone respects, but still, there's a wall of privilege around him. But in the closing days of this race it's clear that Ned will win in affluent, white suburbs and that Joe will win in ethnic blue-collar towns, so it comes down to this: If Ned can mobilize disaffected blacks, he'll win the biggest upset in a generation. If not, he won't.

For the past three weeks, his most effective advocate on this front has been Maxine Waters. Either unknown or polarizing to many whites but adored by most blacks, Waters has argued passionately to the campaign and to black leaders that if Ned can convince African-Americans why his antiwar message matters to them—$250 million a day spent "over there" that could be spent on health care and schools "over here" is a good start—he'll pull enough black votes from Joe to put him over the top. Which in turn will change the way black votes are courted by Democrats in the midterm elections and in the '08 presidential primaries.

Ned's first stop this evening is a warm-up event at the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and then there's a big event scheduled at the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Haven.

A huge crowd turns out in Bridgeport. This isn't just a campaign rally; it's a celebrity event. Sharpton opens slowly and somberly, describing this race as a defining moment in American history, invoking Katrina and the "wrong and unnecessary" war. His task is to explain to an audience that doesn't know Ned why they should trust him. All day he's been bringing up Ned's work "at a school they call dangerous." The reverend goes on to deliver a series of crowd-pleasing one-liners, and then ends with a stem-winder that brings the place to its feet. Whatever you think of his past and his politics, the man has stunning oratorical skills. By contrast, Ned's speech is a little stiff and rote. Not embarrassing, exactly, but not inspiring. This has been a nagging problem for him all along, and while he's improved over time, he still drops way too many ums and you knows into his speeches, destroying all rhythm, and he tends to speed past his applause lines, so audiences primed to embrace him don't even know when to clap.

All of that changes in New Haven.

Ninety percent of what passes for campaigning on the trail is unadulterated, pandering bullshit. But every once in a while, there's a moment that snaps your head back and reaffirms your faith that connection and transformation are still possible in American politics. You just have to have the good luck to be there when it happens. Ned's appearance at the Bethel AME Church, six days before election day, is one of those times.

Jesse Jackson is here to do what Maxine and Al have done before—explain to Bethel AME why it should trust the "Greenwich millionaire," as Lieberman's ads repeatedly dub Ned. "People say Mr. Lamont got some money," Jesse says. "Can he relate to poor people Well, lotta poor people can't relate to poor people!" The line gets a laugh, and then Jesse starts to rev it up. "Judge a tree by the fruit it bears," he tells the crowd. "When he teaches in public schools, I like that kinda fruit! When he's for universal health care, I like that kinda fruit! End the war in Iraq I say: We like that kinda fruit!" Done. They're screaming and pounding their feet. Jesse just delivered this congregation to Ned Lamont. "We'll be measured on Wednesday morning by who worked on Tuesday," he goes on. "It's work time! Walk your block. It's work time! Knock on doors. It's work time! School or jails It's work time! End a war of choice It's work time! Tuesday is End the War Day! C'mon, church people, stand up! End the war! Stand up!"

It's easy to get caught up in the emotion and exaggerate what was just a fleeting moment, but I'm here to report that I saw Ned Lamont transformed in that church. You could see it on his flushed face, in his posture. His role as quixotic underdog is officially over. When he rises to speak, a fuller voice comes from him. The rhythm and cadence have changed. He skillfully builds to his applause lines. He includes a call-and-answer riff that comes out as natural as it is new: "We've gotta make up our minds," he hollers. "What are we gonna tell the country Do we stay the course in Iraq, or do we change course" The crowd yells Change! "Do we leave our troops there, or do we bring 'em home" Home!

Over the course of any campaign, some speeches hit better than others, but this is of an entirely different order from the dozens and dozens of Ned's speeches I've witnessed. Afterward a surge of well-wishers rushes the stage to greet Ned. "I feel it, I feel it, I feel it," yells Linda Louison, reaching out to touch him. I ask her over the din what she means. "I been seeing him on TV," she says. "I wasn't feeling the vibe. But tonight I just felt the spirit of the Lord was telling me that he's my guy."

Amid the crush of people around him, I say to Ned, "In your wildest dreams, did you ever picture yourself up there with Jesse, in a black church, rocking the house like that" He throws his head back with a smile, and I'm sure he's about to say, "No way," but instead he says, "Yes. Yes. In my wildest dreams, I did." And then: "You feel the hope of everybody on every pew, and you know you owe them your heart and soul. It's not like that in Greenwich."

AUGUST 3

Cheeseburgergate

Forty machinists line up outside the gates of a Pratt & Whitney aircraft-assembly plant in Middletown. Their union PAC is delivering a $5,000 check to Ned's campaign today. As Ned and Jesse arrive for the ceremony, ten kids in Lieberman T-shirts stand across the street and scream Joe! Joe! Joe! The Lamont bloggers call these kids "Lieberyouth," an unfortunately callous reference to Hitler Youth, especially considering Joe's religion. But as usual, the bloggers are simultaneously over-the-top and onto something. These kids are a little too organized, and there's often someone vaguely thuggish lurking at their periphery. (The bloggers did make a course correction, eventually calling them "Lieberkidz.") I cross the street to check out the scene and see a slightly older guy dressed in jeans, a dress shirt, and oversize dark sunglasses standing a few feet behind the kids.

I ask him if he's a volunteer for the Lieberman campaign. "I don't know," he says. "I don't think I'm supposed to say."

"Wait, you don't know who you work for"

"The less I know the better," he says.

"What are you guys up to, exactly Are these kids supposed to be protesting the machinists' endorsement of Ned"

"I just brought them out here," he says. "That's all I do. That's all I know."

Ned crosses the street alone and walks down the line of Lieber kids, shaking hands and saying hello. After greeting them all, he mumbles, "Just kids getting paid to yell."

We go back across the street to listen to Jesse, who gathers the mostly white group of union members around him and does his shtick. They're outside a factory entrance, though, not in a church, and the call-and-response routine falls flat. Jesse doesn't even seem into it. It's like a reflex, just what he does.

The Lieber kids continue to scream, and then a big guy comes running up out of nowhere and yells at Ned, "Go Israel! Go Israel!" The Lieber kids cross the street toward us and wade into the union crowd. "Your parents oughta spank ya!" a grizzly union guy yells back. There's a little too much yelling in a little too small a space, and it's crushingly hot. A minor melee erupts when one of the Lieber kids' signs gets too close to a Ned supporter's head. A tug-of-war ensues, and the sign rips slightly amid a great deal more shouting.

Eventually, the police move in, Jesse leaves, and everyone disperses. The daily press peel off to file their "emotions ran high today at a campaign stop" stories.

The next stop is just a few miles away at Ted's, a famous cheeseburger shack in town. Ned greets some supporters on the patio outside, and then we file inside to get our steamed burgers. It's small and crowded in here, and though the drill is to stay as far out of the candidate's way as possible, I get pinned right up against Ned in the crowd. Then, all of a sudden, everyone in the restaurant, in the booths and at the counter, everywhere, simultaneously pulls on a white Lieberman T-shirt. It takes a second to process what's happening. "Oh, my God," Ned says. "It's the Lieber people." They start heckling Ned aggressively, using campaign attack lines about tas and how for sixteen years, until right before this campaign, Ned belonged to a country club in Greenwich that has almost no black members. Most of Joe's supporters in Ted's are kids, but there's one big bald guy, the only adult among them, who starts a loud, frenzied inquisition right in Ned's face. "Are you a Bill Clinton Democrat or an Al Sharpton Democrat"

"They're not mutually exclusive," Ned says.

"No, I'm asking. Answer me! Clinton or Sharpton" Ned tries to answer, but the guy interrupts: "I worked for Abe Ribicoff. He couldn't play golf at your country club in Greenwich!" When Ned starts to turn away, the guy says, "Don't turn your back on me, Ned!"

"Let's keep this civil for the last five days of the campaign," Ned says, and he starts making his way among the Lieber kids, shaking their hands again.

The big bald guy is right in my face now. I ask him where he's from, what his role is here, and he shouts and wags his finger and demands my credentials, yelling to the crowd that I'm not a legitimate reporter and I must be with Ned. Suddenly, I realize the goal here is to provoke Ned into overreacting on-camera. And if not him, then someone on his staff. And it's working; I want badly to take a swing at this lunatic, and I'm not even on the campaign. I flash back to yesterday and the Banana Man and the thug yelling at Tom Swan, "Hit me! Do it!"

Today's poll shows that Ned has surged ahead by thirteen points, and it dawns on me that this is their Hail Mary tactic. This race carries substantial implications for the future of our Iraq policy. Which means it's not an exaggeration to say it has real bearing on our national destiny. And it all could come down to someone throwing a punch at one of these idiots.

AUGUST 4

"Biofuels, switchgrass… is this thing on"

The drone in Joe's voice is lower and slower than usual today. But it's the final weekend, when undecideds break one way or another, and so he soldiers on, relentlessly hitting the same message about Ned: "Lotta money, no experience." At one diner he says, "No one knows what he'll do in the Senate. One thing we do know is he needs a lot of training, 'cause he doesn't even know where the men's room is there." Ned's campaign is worried about this line of attack, and their internal polls show the race tightening.

Joe holds an event at a Citgo gas station to deliver prepared remarks on his proposed energy bill, attended only by the usual kids, two guys from the Connecticut gas-retailers association who say they're supporting Joe, and a few reporters. Everyone else must be with Ned. Joe positions himself next to a pump and intones, "A warning to members of the media: as part of Joe's Tomorrow Tour, a moment of substance." But the scene couldn't be less momentous. Bewildered-looking customers keep pulling up to get gas, then get frustrated and drive slowly away, casting pissed-off glances over their shoulders.

Joe dutifully reviews the details of his proposal: biofuels, tas on oil companies' excess profits, something about switchgrass and agricultural waste. The Lieber kids look exhausted and hot and put their signs down midspeech. When it ends, there's an awkward silence before a lonely woo-hoo floats over from the kids. "Are there any questions" Joe asks. Another painful silence. Finally a reporter says, "When was the last time you pumped gas" Joe gets confused. "I probably did that a few months ago. Of course I do. I drive all the time. Ahhh—within the last few months." He then asks plaintively, "Don't you want to ask me any details about my proposal Isn't anybody interested in that" And then a handler intervenes and says, "All right, let's go," and it's back to the Tomorrow Tour bus.

I get close enough to Joe to ask him if he condones the tactics I saw yesterday. Stories about "Cheeseburgergate" are flying across the blogosphere, and even the Hartford Courant and New York Times reporters are asking Joe about his tactics now. "It's all part of politics, unfortunately, in this day and age," he says. But Senator, do you condone the tactics at the machinists' rally and at Ted's He says he doesn't know anything about those tactics but adds, with righteous indignation, that he did see a picture in this morning's Courant "of a Lamont supporter attacking two of my kids." There you go. That seems to be the plan. Get the Lieber kids attacked and then get righteous. A handler cuts off my follow-up question and escorts the senator out of reach.

AUGUST 5

Calm. A little too calm

For the final ground-war push, Ned has a team of volunteers, mobilized by small-town committees, bloggers, and advocacy groups like MoveOn.org, calling likely voters and knocking on doors. Joe is flooding the zone in blue-collar towns and the urban neighborhoods of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven.

But a strange calm descends on the campaign trail itself. Joe takes Saturday off to observe the Sabbath. Ned makes an appearance at the Good Lookin Barbershop in downtown Bridgeport.

Inside the small shop, a chessboard sits on top of stacked milk cartons, and a big picture of Louis Farrakhan at the million-man march hangs on the wall. Two barbers are busy shaving heads, and a couple of customers sit waiting. It seems a strange way to spend the final hours of the campaign, with six potential voters. Ned introduces himself to Shaun Muhammad, barber and part owner. Shaun has neatly clipped hair, a crisp white button-down shirt, a sharp bow tie, and a lot of pointed questions: "What obstacles can you overcome for me that Lieberman can't" "How are you going to help small businesses out" "Once politicians win, they forget minorities. We don't see them round here. It's like they robbed the bank and are on the getaway. What's the guarantee you'll bring your promises to fruition" Ned answers the questions with stock sound bites, but he looks Shaun straight in the eye and stays with him as long as Shaun has questions.

Suddenly, a street-marketing van appears, wrapped in vibrant JOE GOTTA GO art, and a local TV news crew arrives. They want Ned to go back in to reenact his barbershop conversations. Alexis McGill, a young black Yale-educated strategist for Ned who cut her teeth running Sean Combs's Vote or Die campaign, is directing traffic. Her strategy is new-school: to connect Ned to younger voters through barbershops, club promotions, hip-hop radio, street networks. She's basically breaking Ned on the street the way you break a new band. Jesse's and Al's appearances fit perfectly into the model, she says, because they are "validators" of the message. "Our street teams have ears to the ground," she goes on, "and they say the streets are 100 percent Ned. Joe may get the vote to the polls through his old-school machine, but those voters won't necessarily vote for Joe."

I go back inside the barbershop. There may be only six people in here, but if they're plugged into a larger neighborhood network, how quickly can that message spread to a wider audience I ask Shaun what he makes of Ned. "I just haven't seen Joe around here," he says. "And Jesse and Al being for Ned has an effect. They're for the people, not against them. They must know something about Ned that the masses don't, because they're working for the little man, not for the cosmic hold of the rich."

"But Ned's from Greenwich!"

He laughs. "Well, you know, if I went to Greenwich, that's not too good for me. It's like me being in Baghdad. But if he's able to get the job done, I don't care if he's from Zimbabwe or Kalamazoo."

AUGUST 6

A very, very brief lesson on democracy

All day Joe's handlers have been promoting a "major speech" tonight—"Joe's closing argument," they say—and when the time arrives, the press row in a community center in East Haven is jammed with cameras. We're forty-eight hours out now, and for the first time in a while, at least on Joe's part of the trail, there's genuine excitement in the room.

In part it's because Max Cleland is here. A triple amputee from a grenade explosion in Vietnam, Cleland became a Democratic Party martyr in '02 when Republicans ran a famously slimy campaign against him for the Georgia Senate. TV ads used a vote he cast against a bill to establish the Homeland Security Department—because he felt it insufficiently protected workers' rights—to claim Cleland sided with bin Laden and Saddam. Joe is arguing that Ned's message, that a vote for Joe is a vote for Bush, is as underhanded as what the Republicans did to Max. The substance doesn't quite fly, but the symbolism does—and there's no denying that it's a hell of an inspiring sight just to see Max up there.

Joe's major speech, it turns out, consists mostly of him saying that he does indeed respect criticism of the president, and then immediately getting defensive. "I was part of the antiwar movement in the late 1960s," he says, "so I don't need to be lectured by Ned Lamont or anyone else about the place of dissent in our democracy."

AUGUST 7

Ned Lamont's day off

Joe bounces off the bus, looking the happiest I've seen him in a month. Poll results show Ned's lead is back down to six, cut in half in the past four days. And while Joe has six public events scheduled for today, Ned did two early-morning appearances and then retreated to his office to make calls and do one-on-one media interviews—all day.

Joe's all over it. "I understand my opponent is taking a light day," he says. "I'm out here all day working—that's the kind of guy I am."

Earlier in the campaign, Ned made several stops at the Rajun Cajun, a famous bar and diner in a black neighborhood in Hartford, where he was told that they hadn't seen Joe in a long, long time. But Joe finds his way there today. The place is flooded with field staff, vans, placards, postcards. Hartford has magically become carpeted with red-and-white vote for joe signs overnight. A soundmobile races around and around the neighborhood with amplified recorded messages from Joe, Bill Clinton, and Senator Chris Dodd. Joe is omnipresent; his face and disembodied voice are everywhere. It feels like a Dear Leader rally in North Korea. How much cash did they spend to pull this off

By midafternoon the Lamont brain trust must have figured out that their Rose Garden strategy is a mistake, and they call a press conference outside their office in New Haven for five forty-five. We all race there, but the TV-news guys grumble that by the time it wraps, it'll be too late to run before the end of the local five-thirty news. Ned seems snitty and defensive. He makes a diffident ninety-second synopsis of his stump speech and then opens for questions. Why did you go dark all day while Joe lit it up Where were you He retorts with an uncharacteristic edge, "Where were you at 5 a.m." Then he says all the media attention at his events lately is "just a little distracting." It's amateur hour in the Lamont campaign at exactly the wrong time. The guy has run an exhilarating campaign, but at the most crucial moment he's fraying; and Joe has run a sad-sack campaign, but at the most crucial moment he's peaking.

AUGUST 8

Return of the Rainbow Coalition

Day zero, 6:30 a.m., beautiful outside; the crushing heat has passed. I'm in New Haven with the Reverend Al Sharpton and his ally here, the Reverend Boise Kimber. Al's visiting a bunch of polling stations in the black wards this morning, and everywhere he goes people shout out to him or hug him and pay respect. "Hey, Rev," an old guy calls out, "I know you're a man of politics, but you're also a man of God. Give me some Scripture."

Without missing a beat, Al hollers back, "Saint John 14:1."

"All right! 'Believe in God. Believe also in me.' "

"You got it!" Al says, and keeps on moving.

The Reverend Kimber's phone rings—it's not even seven yet, but his phone doesn't stop—and he whispers to us, "It's Jesse." A moment later he's bellowing, "Jesse, get outta bed, man! We're in a war here, and you still in bed"

Today, Al's taking the war to the airwaves. After we visit the last polling station, we pile into a Town Car and head toward Hartford, where he's doing a drive-time radio show: He's responding to a Lieberman ad in heavy rotation on hip-hop stations that implies Ned's a racist because of his diversity-challenged country club. The moment we're settled in the car, the rebuttal ad Al cut yesterday comes on. He turns it up: "I understand Joe is all over the airwaves trying to paint Ned Lamont as a racist. This is not true; that is insulting to our community," Al's disembodied radio voice insists. The real Al in front of me listens closely. "That's gonna run all day," he says, looking pleased.

Twelve hours from now, it'll be clear that Al and Jesse and Maxine—and Ned—did their jobs well in the African-American precincts, though no major news outlet will analyze the election that way. Joe's campaign had banked on winning large majorities in New Haven and Hartford, where most Democrats are black, but Ned will win both cities. Joe expected to win by more than several thousand votes in heavily black Bridgeport; he'll win by only 504 votes. Tomorrow, after Joe rejects the primary vote and announces he'll stay in the race as an independent, after he comes out of the gate criticizing first Ned Lamont and next Maxine Waters, after his spokesman, Dan Gerstein, strikes the new race-baiting note that will be central to the first week of Joe's general-election campaign by labeling Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton "two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party," I'll speak to one of Joe's campaign staffers, who will tell me that the black vote threw the election to Lamont "definitively." He'll also tell me that before he started attacking him, Joe had reached out to Al for support, confirming something Al says in the Town Car en route to Hartford:

"Lieberman called me personally to come to Connecticut. Probably the biggest irony of this whole campaign to me is Joe 'DLC' Lieberman calls me for support. How do you criticize Al Sharpton for being in Connecticut when Lieberman called and asked me to come And I did come. I just didn't come for him. So it's kinda odd to make a pariah outta somebody you asked to help you."

We're hurtling north up Interstate 91, from urban New Haven to urban Hartford, passing through the beautiful rolling green valleys of suburban Connecticut. They won't be asking Al Sharpton for Scripture, and he surely cost Ned some votes here. And Joe may be able to exploit that right through the election in November and keep his seat that way. Or not. In this car, on this summer day in Connecticut, at least, all things are possible between the valley and the pulpit.

Al's inspired now. It's still early, but he's on a roll, preaching to an audience of one. "Ned Lamont is an unlikely vehicle. It's always unlikely people who turn history. It must be God has a funny sense of humor. In my imagination, I see the meeting in heaven when they say it's time to really deal with this war: 'We need a messenger to send to the Democratic Party.' And an angel says, 'I got this guy in Connecticut, a real goofy, rich Greenwich, Connecticut, white guy who in Harlem would be like Gomer Pyle. Let's make him the candidate.' I can see everyone falling down laughing. And look where we are this morning. I tell you one thing: I don't think Joe Lieberman is laughing. No matter how this night ends, he ain't laughing. They're gonna have to rethink the whole centrist strategy. Democrats everywhere are going to have to rethink their strategy. It's just amazing."

Al's growing more expansive about the coalition that formed around Ned, of antiwar liberals, scared soccer moms, disaffected union members, and mobilized blacks—how they're not only going to put Ned over the top here but they're also going to change the direction of Democratic politics. "This is the beginning of the end of the right-wing takeover of the Democratic party," he says. "This is a whole different kind of people comin' together out of mutual interest and mutual respect. And the people that have the courage to stand up are gonna be the ones that usher in a new movement. Sometimes in life, you gotta make the decision to do what you think is right, and out of it something grows. I think Ned Lamont made the right decision."

Kenneth Cain last wrote for GQ about the deaths of sixteen Marines from Ohio.

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